As oil and gas reserves have been consumed over the years, the extraction of the oil and gas has become increasingly more difficult under more demanding conditions. Accordingly, there is a need for the reserves to be monitored to a higher quality than hitherto. The potential payback is reducing operating costs and increasing the yield from individual reservoirs. The invention also impacts on operational and environmental safety.
GB-A-2284257 relates to apparatus for the remote measurement of physical parameters. Experience over many installations has shown that the technique is not always reliable especially when deploying optical fibre sensors through steel hydraulic control lines in oil wells where the steel hydraulic control lines contain many bends and curves. The problem is that optical fibre cables can become stalled in the control line which can lead to tangling and possible destruction of the optical fibre cable in the hydraulic control line.
An aim of the present invention is to improve on known apparatus by improving the reliability of the apparatus needed to install and retrieve an optical fibre sensor for the measurement of physical parameters.